6. Entering Deadline Dates
One common mistake made by new Project users is to place
semi-flexible or inflexible constraints on too many tasks in their
projects. Such constraints severely limit your scheduling
flexibility.
Yet, if you know that a specific task must be completed by a
certain date, why not enter a Must Finish On constraint? This is the
reason: Assume that you have a five-day task that you want to see
completed by April 13, and today is April 2. If you enter a Must
Finish On constraint on the task and set it to April 13, Project will
move it out so that it will indeed end on April 13.
Even if the task could be completed earlier, Project
will not reschedule it to start earlier. In fact, by applying that
constraint, you have increased the risk for this task. If the task is
delayed for even one day for any reason (a required resource is sick,
for example), the task will miss its planned finish date.
A better approach to scheduling this task is to use the default
As Soon As Possible constraint and enter a deadline of April 13. A
deadline is a date value you enter for a task that indicates the
latest date by which you want the task to be completed, but the
deadline date itself does not constrain the task.
Now the task has the greatest scheduling flexibility. It might
be completed well before its deadline, depending on resource
availability, predecessor tasks, and whatever other scheduling issues
apply.
Entering a deadline date causes Project to display a deadline
indicator on the chart portion of the Gantt Chart view. If the task’s
finish date moves past its deadline, Project displays a missed
deadline indicator in the Indicator field for
that task.
In this exercise, you enter a deadline date for a task.
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On the File tab, click
Save As.
The Save As dialog box appears.
-
In the File name box,
type Advanced Tasks B, and then
click Save.
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In the Task Name column,
select the name of task 5, Handoff to
Editorial.
-
On the Task tab,
in the Editing group, click
Scroll to Task.
This task is a milestone marking the scheduled finish date
of the acquisition phase of the new book project. You want to make
sure that the acquisition task concludes by Friday, May 11, 2012,
so you will enter a deadline date for this milestone.
-
On the Task tab, in the
Properties group, click
Information.
The Task Information dialog box appears.
-
Click the Advanced
tab.
-
In the Deadline box, type
or select 5/11/12, and then
click OK.
Project displays a deadline indicator in the chart portion
of the Gantt Chart view.
You can now see at a glance how close the end of the
acquisition phase, as currently scheduled, will come to meeting or
missing its deadline. If the scheduled completion of the
Acquisition phase moves past May 11, Project will display a missed
deadline indicator in the Indicators column.
Entering a deadline date has no effect on the scheduling of a
summary or subtask. However, a deadline date will cause Project to
alert you if the scheduled completion of a task exceeds its deadline
date.
Tip
To remove a deadline from a task, clear the Deadline field on
the Advanced tab of the Task Information dialog box.
